traditional landscape paintings by dawn chandler

the new mexico paintings

“I have seen so much light, so much violent color, so many fires, that my mind is exhausted with the recording of it. I am touched with ocher, rose, shimmering gold; with silver of the moon, the flanks of stone mountains washed with a shade of apricot so unreal no painter would dare attempt reproduction.”

— Jane Candia Coleman, Shadows in My Hands: A Southwestern Odyssey
Few other regions inspire Dawn Chandler as much Northern New Mexico. Her love affair with the 47th state began in 1980 when, on her first visit, she backpacked for two weeks at the Philmont Ranch near Cimarron, in Colfax County. After that her dreams were filled with memories of fiery sunsets and fragrant rain, orange-brown adobe and turquoise skies. Despite Coleman’s quote above, Dawn had to attempt reproduction of those colors, those vistas. And so she has, with her oil landscape paintings of New Mexico.